PC-BSD is built atop FreeBSD, but it's unquestionably a different thing than FreeBSD.
There are reasons to use ZFS, and other reasons to use UFS. Sometimes you really DO want UFS on raid-10. It depends entirely on the workload.
UFS has been around for decades now. I can't say it's bug free--nothing is--but most of the code paths have been quite well exercised. ZFS is newer and more complex than UFS, and more actively developed.
UFS is likely to remain the default in mainstream FreeBSD, for licensing reasons if nothing else.
The most important consideration is the format desired by your publisher. If your publisher wants doc files, you get to use Word.
Any publisher's staff is overworked and underpaid, just like the rest of us. If you make your editor work harder because you won't work to the company's requirements, then they won't work as hard on your book. You want them improving your book, believe me. You don't write as well as you think you do. Nobody does.
Will the publisher try to work with you when you present your manuscript in a bastardized mix of LaTeX and POD? Sure. But you won't make friends. And being friends with your publisher's employees is essential if you want your book to actually appear on bookstore shelves.
Re:Should rename the book
on
PGP & GPG
·
· Score: 1
title soon to become "PGP & GPG: encryption for the practical suspicious target of the homeland security dept."
(Caveat: I'm the author of the book)
I thought about such a subtitle, but the book is not just for the average person. Rich Americans can read it, too.
5.X still has all of the debugging options on by default.
This can cut your performance by a good 50% or so.
Debugging gets turned off last thing before release. (I'm not sure if a RC has debugging or not, mind you, but the BETAs certainly do.)
FreeBSD 5 is not yet officially out
on
FreeBSD 5.2 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Folks,
The mirrors are still updating. While 5.X is imminent,/. has once again jumped the gun.
In the past, we of the FreeBSD Project have started distributing an image to our mirrors and then recalled it when a last-minute bug is discovered. IIRC, at least once/. has pre-announced the release and people got bad code.
Please do not grab this image thinking that it's FreeBSD 5.2! It won't be out until Scott Long says that it ready and available, and he has the right to nix this image up until the time he makes that announcement.
By writing every day, whether I want to or not.:-)
You can also get a sample chapter at the book's web site, http://www.AbsoluteOpenBSD.com, and order through me directly if you like. (The actual orders are handled by No Starch Press, but I make a tiny bit more money off of them if you order through me.)
==ml
Slashdotted: text of article
on
BSDs to be Merged
·
· Score: 5, Funny
At the recent ITECD conference, the United Nations delegates determined that the BSDs must unite in order to provide a single best platform for use in third-world countries, and dispatched negotiators to each of the project leads, resulting in the new "FretBSD Project." The members of the FreeBSD and NetBSD teams have joined in whole-heartedly, with both present and past members giving it their blessing. "Now that us old geezers are out of the way, the BSD projects can reunify like they should have done years ago" said Jordan Hubbard, a long time player involved in FreeBSD from the start, but now moved onto other projects.
Luke Mewburn, previous NetBSD core team member, said he was keen to help with the merger: "FreeBSD was already using the NetBSD FTP daemon, our rc.d system, and our Cardbus support. This was inevitable, really."
Perry Metzger, ex-NetBSD developer with Wasabi Systems, said: "This is what we've been waiting for! It'll give us access to more developers and users! Could you please take the electrodes off now?" Mr. Metzger will be doing his future FretBSD work from the lowest level of the maximum-security United States prison camp in Guatanamo Bay, with a 24x7 armed guard to ensure his safety.
Theo de Raadt could not be reached for comment. While Theo's home has been surrounded, UN peacekeeper troops have yet to storm the building. UN spokesmen insist that the siege is going according to plan, however, and Theo is expected to be available for integration in the new combined BSD at some date in late 2023. Of the two hundred eighty-nine casualties suffered by the UN troops at this time, the commanding officer insists that they were caused by a rampaging Canadian moose. Daniel Hartmeier, previously of the OpenBSD Project, insists that OpenBSD has no weapons of moose destruction.
Within a week, all mailing lists and Web servers for the legacy NetBSD and FreeBSD projects will be terminated. The mailing list for the new combined project will be hosted from the United Nations datacenter on a Microsoft Exchange server. As UN monitors will be moderating the mailing lists to prevent disagreements and divisive arguments before they begin, this system is expected to be adequate for the load.
The biggest controversy seems to be the selection of a new logo, which has stirred much debate within the new FretBSD community. While the BSD Daemon will remain, it's just a matter of changing his sneakers. Kris Kennaway, ex-FreeBSD Ports Cluster administrator, said : "We need to change those sneakers. Why do you think they're green anyway? Purple is a much superior color".
In a rather disturbing vein, Greg Lehey has disappeared. Rumours continue to circulate that he has set up a rogue CVS and mail server somewhere in Tasmania. Similar rumours surrounding the disappearance of Christos Zoulas have not been substantiated, but we have been unable to contact him.
It doesn't reject messages. It defers them forever, telling the open relay to "try again later."
This tool is a weapon against open relays. The goal is to fill up the open relay's hard drives by deferring the incoming mail, rather than just rejecting the messages.
Yes, you can do this with other blacklists as well, but nobody seems to be actually doing that.
How do you feel about M$ taking all the networking layer code from BSD?
I feel absolutely delighted.
As a FreeBSD committer, I have deliberately chosen to abandon any right to ask for anything in return for my work. Apple took us up on that. I am still happy with my decision, as are most of the BSD developers I know.
Your decision on how to release your work may differ.
One thing that gets lost in the licensing debates is the pro-BSD argument. I wrote an essay about this for Linux.com a couple of years ago. They've taken it down, but you can still grab it at http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ferrets.h tml
Yes, this group represents all writers who join, in the same way Congress represents the US citizenry. The phrase "tyrrany of the majority" comes to mind. It's a committee, with all that that entails.
The Guild requested members not link to Amazon. Individual members can decide whether or not to comply.
Personally, I will comply. Here's why.
As a new author with my third book coming out, I have a simple goal: make a living doing something I enjoy. Some people enjoy systems administration, or get the warm fuzzies from nursing or working in a pet shop. I want you to read my stuff. If you enjoy it, I want you to buy more of it. As an author, it's my job to make damned sure you enjoy it. Used bookstores assist in this goal, for reasons detailed elsewhere in this discussion.
I would prefer you bought my books new. I would also prefer that my publisher paid me a royalty of $500 per copy sold. And, while I'm at it, I'd like a pony.
These days, the economics of writing are harsh. We're being squeezed by publishers in the same way users are being squeezed by publishers. (I'm very lucky to have a publisher who is not only reasonable, but downright generous. It's also a small company, which explains a lot.) The DMCA is a weapon to be used against users, but the publishing contract is a weapon to be used against writers. When you have a one-on-one relationship, and one party is freakin' huge compared to the other, the big guy don't needs laws to enforce his will.
If your name isn't headline material, you're shafted. The advance on a novel in 1960 was about three thousand dollars. The advance on a novel in 2000 was about three thousand dollars. You do the math.
As an outhor, not linking to Amazon is a good idea. There are other vendors that will sell books that will put more money in my pocket. In this context, asking Amazon to not display used books so prominently is reasonable.
It's also reasonable for Amazon to say no.
The real problem here is the majority of publishing companies. More books are published, by volume, than ever before. Fewer individual authors are published than ever before. Most of the books on the Web are crap -- the technical content is OK, but when was the last time you read a good, new, Web-only novel? The "publishing explosion" of Web stuff is simply an explosion of compost with a few diamonds strewn through it.
I long for the day when print-on-demand becomes possible for mainstream distribution, and new authors can have their works available. But by that time, the publishing companies will have tightened the "standard contract" so far that an author will no longer own their own work. It's already happening, much as it happened to the music business.
My original title on this piece was "Introduction to NFS". To the best of my knowledge, ten people in the world truly, deeply understand NFS. Six have won Nobel Prizes, three are in the Institute for the Criminally Insane, and one is not allowed sharp objects and drools on himself a lot. O'Reilly does not seem to like my original titles... ah, well.
Finally, if Slashdot was going to pick up one of my articles... why, my God, did they choose this one? There are many far more interesting and informative Big Scary Daemons out there... take a look at "Linux Emulation, the Hard Way" for one I'm especially proud of. Sigh. Obviously, they don't want the editorial standard to go above that maintained by other Slashdot authors...
When I started using FreeBSD in 1995, they were in worse shape than they are now. No commercial support at all, except for one little server donated by Walnut Creek. The FAQ was scary. IIRC, there was no Handbook. And they *still* kicked butt over anything else out there.
And GPLing is not at all necessary. Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?
This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.
As an occasional reviewer myself: Reviewing a book fairly is a lot of work. When reviewing a book, you're usually expected to make certain minimal allowances for it. "Am I really the target audience for this book?" "What if I wasn't an expert in this field?" And so on.
The only reason for writing a bad review is if the book is so egregiously offensive that you have to get rid of the bile it generated. This seems to be in that category.
As Gene Wolfe said (paraphrased): "Some people finish every book they start. This really impresses me. Personally, when I get shit in my eyes, I close them."
Chances are, if someone's gone to the trouble to read the whole book, it's a decent book. How many Linux books don't get reviewed here, anyway?
Not hypocrisy. As a judge, one of the things you must do is avoid even the appearance of impartiality. That's why the appeals court was so darned eager to hear the appeal, because Jackson violated one of the cardinal rules of being a judge.
Here's the good news, straight from the decision.
We defer to the District Court's findings of fact
They agree with the conclusions, they disagree with his behavior! Hallelujah! It might take longer, but MS will still get nailed.
I've written half a dozen novels, none of which have been published. Each of the last three has gotten a personalized rejection letter from a senior editor, with comments relevant to the book, so they don't suck completely.
With the high cost of paper, publisher catalogs are shrinking quickly. E-books are beginning to become a good marketplace for new writers. If you can make it as an e-book author, you can get "promoted" to real book author.
On the other hand, I don't want my books either a) pirated, or b) chained down.
Writing is work. Some day, I'd like to pay the rent doing work I love. If it's spammed all over the Net, I can kiss that dream good-bye.
I've discovered my favorite authors by someone handing me a battered paperback and saying "Read this." If I liked the author, I went out and bought their works. Heck, I have everything Philip K Dick and Tim Powers ever wrote, thanks to someone handing me a book.
In fact, one of my friends just said that I'm the only person he knows that "has three feet of Dick, and isn't afraid to show it off." All from a hand-to-hand paperback.
They can't kill PicoBSD; after all, it's maintained by volunteers.
Remember, they can't buy FreeBSD itself. They can employ several developers, they can provide the main FTP site, but they can't kill any part of FreeBSD any more than Red Hat could kill Linux.
Just as any one company cannot kill Linux, no one company can kill FreeBSD. BSDi does not own FreeBSD -- nobody owns FreeBSD. While it would suck big-time if they fired their FreeBSD developers, it wouldn't take more than a day for each of them to find a new job developing FreeBSD.
Wind River could kill BSD/OS. But by the time they do that, I suspect that the really cool stuff will have already been assimilated into FreeBSD. That process is well under way now.
If Wind River stopped selling FreeBSD CDs, how long do you think it would be until the FreeBSD Foundation picked up the slack? Or until Jordan Hubbard found a new employer who would do it for them?
I use FreeBSD on my Toshiba Satellite just fine. Sound, X, pcmcia, everything.
If you're having trouble with PCMCIA, check out this Big Scary Daemons article: Laptops, PC Cards, and FreeBSD
Short answer; if it doesn't work, you probably have an IRQ conflict.
This is a FTP-only release, to integrate the overseas and US versions of FreeBSD.
The release of RSA was deemed important enough to warrant this. It gives a convenient install point for those of us who want RSA on a production system and don't want to bother with upgrading after install.
After all, 4.1-RELEASE is rock-solid, there's no other reason to upgrade.
Well, on the subject of authors responding to comments on their own work:
There is a certain school of writing that considers discussing or defending one's own work in public to be crass. I write both fiction and technical material, and in the past I wrote role-playing games. (If Katz thinks this flaming is bad, he should see some RPG fans dissecting one's work!:)
Among these people, the rule in these situations is: read the comments, consider them, and use them to improve your own work. Never defend your work, because you'll eventually wind up at either: "You misread what I wrote," or "I disagree."
If they didn't understand you, you need to investigate your published writing and find your error. The point of writing is not to write so you can be understood; it is to write so you cannot be misunderstood. If they disagree, you can either choose rational discussion, or consider their arguments privately. Either way, flames don't enter into it.
Obviously, you can take this too far. Salman Rushdie needed to speak out when the Iranian theocracy declared a fatwah on him; but nobody has put a price on Katz's head, either.
The Net makes it easy to update documents. It might be that the old-school "publish it and let it stand on its own" standard is obsolete, and that living, constantly-updating articles will soon be considered the norm. This attitude will not die before then.
I'm not saying that Katz is of this school, but it's certainly possible. I know more than one professional writer who believes this. After attempting to publicly defend my own work, I believe it also.
Fortunately, unlike a paper mag, Slashdot has options to let you never see posts by a columnist. If he annoys you that much, set your preferences to hide him.
Slashdot Mirror
The book contains 204 numbered pages. Add in the index, Table of Contents, preface, copyright page, etc, and it hits 240 pages.
I did not do this in an effort to screw with people.
Had it occurred to me beforehand, however... yeah, I would have totally done that to screw with people.
==ml
PC-BSD is built atop FreeBSD, but it's unquestionably a different thing than FreeBSD.
There are reasons to use ZFS, and other reasons to use UFS. Sometimes you really DO want UFS on raid-10. It depends entirely on the workload.
UFS has been around for decades now. I can't say it's bug free--nothing is--but most of the code paths have been quite well exercised. ZFS is newer and more complex than UFS, and more actively developed.
UFS is likely to remain the default in mainstream FreeBSD, for licensing reasons if nothing else.
ZFS is NOT the default in FreeBSD 10. UFS is still the standard.
(I try not to comment on reviews of my books, but a technical statement merits a technical answer.)
==ml
The most important consideration is the format desired by your publisher. If your publisher wants doc files, you get to use Word.
Any publisher's staff is overworked and underpaid, just like the rest of us. If you make your editor work harder because you won't work to the company's requirements, then they won't work as hard on your book. You want them improving your book, believe me. You don't write as well as you think you do. Nobody does.
Will the publisher try to work with you when you present your manuscript in a bastardized mix of LaTeX and POD? Sure. But you won't make friends. And being friends with your publisher's employees is essential if you want your book to actually appear on bookstore shelves.
(Caveat: I'm the author of the book)
I thought about such a subtitle, but the book is not just for the average person. Rich Americans can read it, too.
==ml
5.X still has all of the debugging options on by default.
This can cut your performance by a good 50% or so.
Debugging gets turned off last thing before release. (I'm not sure if a RC has debugging or not, mind you, but the BETAs certainly do.)
Folks,
/. has once again jumped the gun.
/. has pre-announced the release and people got bad code.
The mirrors are still updating. While 5.X is imminent,
In the past, we of the FreeBSD Project have started distributing an image to our mirrors and then recalled it when a last-minute bug is discovered. IIRC, at least once
Please do not grab this image thinking that it's FreeBSD 5.2! It won't be out until Scott Long says that it ready and available, and he has the right to nix this image up until the time he makes that announcement.
mwlucas at the obvious domain name
Am I the only one who got that the whole description of where this came from was a joke? Sheesh.
I thought I made it very clear:
:-)
NetBSD on a palmtop makes me unquestioned Alpha Geek in the office.
By writing every day, whether I want to or not. :-)
You can also get a sample chapter at the book's web site, http://www.AbsoluteOpenBSD.com, and order through me directly if you like. (The actual orders are handled by No Starch Press, but I make a tiny bit more money off of them if you order through me.)
==ml
At the recent ITECD conference, the United Nations delegates
determined that the BSDs must unite in order to provide a single best
platform for use in third-world countries, and dispatched negotiators
to each of the project leads, resulting in the new "FretBSD Project."
The members of the FreeBSD and NetBSD teams have joined in
whole-heartedly, with both present and past members giving it their
blessing. "Now that us old geezers are out of the way, the BSD
projects can reunify like they should have done years ago" said Jordan
Hubbard, a long time player involved in FreeBSD from the start, but
now moved onto other projects.
Luke Mewburn, previous NetBSD core team member, said he was keen to
help with the merger: "FreeBSD was already using the NetBSD FTP
daemon, our rc.d system, and our Cardbus support. This was inevitable,
really."
Perry Metzger, ex-NetBSD developer with Wasabi Systems, said: "This is
what we've been waiting for! It'll give us access to more developers
and users! Could you please take the electrodes off now?"
Mr. Metzger will be doing his future FretBSD work from the lowest
level of the maximum-security United States prison camp in Guatanamo
Bay, with a 24x7 armed guard to ensure his safety.
Theo de Raadt could not be reached for comment. While Theo's home has
been surrounded, UN peacekeeper troops have yet to storm the building.
UN spokesmen insist that the siege is going according to plan,
however, and Theo is expected to be available for integration in the
new combined BSD at some date in late 2023. Of the two hundred
eighty-nine casualties suffered by the UN troops at this time, the
commanding officer insists that they were caused by a rampaging
Canadian moose. Daniel Hartmeier, previously of the OpenBSD Project,
insists that OpenBSD has no weapons of moose destruction.
Within a week, all mailing lists and Web servers for the legacy NetBSD
and FreeBSD projects will be terminated. The mailing list for the new
combined project will be hosted from the United Nations datacenter on
a Microsoft Exchange server. As UN monitors will be moderating the
mailing lists to prevent disagreements and divisive arguments before
they begin, this system is expected to be adequate for the load.
The biggest controversy seems to be the selection of a new logo, which
has stirred much debate within the new FretBSD community. While the
BSD Daemon will remain, it's just a matter of changing his sneakers.
Kris Kennaway, ex-FreeBSD Ports Cluster administrator, said : "We need
to change those sneakers. Why do you think they're green anyway?
Purple is a much superior color".
In a rather disturbing vein, Greg Lehey has disappeared. Rumours
continue to circulate that he has set up a rogue CVS and mail server
somewhere in Tasmania. Similar rumours surrounding the disappearance
of Christos Zoulas have not been substantiated, but we have been
unable to contact him.
It doesn't reject messages. It defers them forever, telling the open relay to "try again later."
This tool is a weapon against open relays. The goal is to fill up the open relay's hard drives by deferring the incoming mail, rather than just rejecting the messages.
Yes, you can do this with other blacklists as well, but nobody seems to be actually doing that.
How do you feel about M$ taking all the networking layer code from BSD?
I feel absolutely delighted.
As a FreeBSD committer, I have deliberately chosen to abandon any right to ask for anything in return for my work. Apple took us up on that. I am still happy with my decision, as are most of the BSD developers I know.
Your decision on how to release your work may differ.
One thing that gets lost in the licensing debates is the pro-BSD argument. I wrote an essay about this for Linux.com a couple of years ago. They've taken it down, but you can still grab it at http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ferrets.h tml
Yes, this group represents all writers who join, in the same way Congress represents the US citizenry. The phrase "tyrrany of the majority" comes to mind. It's a committee, with all that that entails.
The Guild requested members not link to Amazon. Individual members can decide whether or not to comply.
Personally, I will comply. Here's why.
As a new author with my third book coming out, I have a simple goal: make a living doing something I enjoy. Some people enjoy systems administration, or get the warm fuzzies from nursing or working in a pet shop. I want you to read my stuff. If you enjoy it, I want you to buy more of it. As an author, it's my job to make damned sure you enjoy it. Used bookstores assist in this goal, for reasons detailed elsewhere in this discussion.
I would prefer you bought my books new. I would also prefer that my publisher paid me a royalty of $500 per copy sold. And, while I'm at it, I'd like a pony.
These days, the economics of writing are harsh. We're being squeezed by publishers in the same way users are being squeezed by publishers. (I'm very lucky to have a publisher who is not only reasonable, but downright generous. It's also a small company, which explains a lot.) The DMCA is a weapon to be used against users, but the publishing contract is a weapon to be used against writers. When you have a one-on-one relationship, and one party is freakin' huge compared to the other, the big guy don't needs laws to enforce his will.
If your name isn't headline material, you're shafted. The advance on a novel in 1960 was about three thousand dollars. The advance on a novel in 2000 was about three thousand dollars. You do the math.
As an outhor, not linking to Amazon is a good idea. There are other vendors that will sell books that will put more money in my pocket. In this context, asking Amazon to not display used books so prominently is reasonable.
It's also reasonable for Amazon to say no.
The real problem here is the majority of publishing companies. More books are published, by volume, than ever before. Fewer individual authors are published than ever before. Most of the books on the Web are crap -- the technical content is OK, but when was the last time you read a good, new, Web-only novel? The "publishing explosion" of Web stuff is simply an explosion of compost with a few diamonds strewn through it.
I long for the day when print-on-demand becomes possible for mainstream distribution, and new authors can have their works available. But by that time, the publishing companies will have tightened the "standard contract" so far that an author will no longer own their own work. It's already happening, much as it happened to the music business.
re uid/username: mea culpa.
My original title on this piece was "Introduction to NFS". To the best of my knowledge, ten people in the world truly, deeply understand NFS. Six have won Nobel Prizes, three are in the Institute for the Criminally Insane, and one is not allowed sharp objects and drools on himself a lot. O'Reilly does not seem to like my original titles... ah, well.
Finally, if Slashdot was going to pick up one of my articles... why, my God, did they choose this one? There are many far more interesting and informative Big Scary Daemons out there... take a look at "Linux Emulation, the Hard Way" for one I'm especially proud of. Sigh. Obviously, they don't want the editorial standard to go above that maintained by other Slashdot authors...
Because nobody's submitted the code for it.
If you feel like writing this, go right ahead. Submit it as a PR. If it works, and it's reliable, it'll get picked up.
When I started using FreeBSD in 1995, they were in worse shape than they are now. No commercial support at all, except for one little server donated by Walnut Creek. The FAQ was scary. IIRC, there was no Handbook. And they *still* kicked butt over anything else out there.
And GPLing is not at all necessary. Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?
This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.
As an occasional reviewer myself: Reviewing a book fairly is a lot of work. When reviewing a book, you're usually expected to make certain minimal allowances for it. "Am I really the target audience for this book?" "What if I wasn't an expert in this field?" And so on.
The only reason for writing a bad review is if the book is so egregiously offensive that you have to get rid of the bile it generated. This seems to be in that category.
As Gene Wolfe said (paraphrased): "Some people finish every book they start. This really impresses me. Personally, when I get shit in my eyes, I close them."
Chances are, if someone's gone to the trouble to read the whole book, it's a decent book. How many Linux books don't get reviewed here, anyway?
Not hypocrisy. As a judge, one of the things you must do is avoid even the appearance of impartiality. That's why the appeals court was so darned eager to hear the appeal, because Jackson violated one of the cardinal rules of being a judge. Here's the good news, straight from the decision. We defer to the District Court's findings of fact They agree with the conclusions, they disagree with his behavior! Hallelujah! It might take longer, but MS will still get nailed.
I'm also interested, but as a content producer.
I've written half a dozen novels, none of which have been published. Each of the last three has gotten a personalized rejection letter from a senior editor, with comments relevant to the book, so they don't suck completely.
With the high cost of paper, publisher catalogs are shrinking quickly. E-books are beginning to become a good marketplace for new writers. If you can make it as an e-book author, you can get "promoted" to real book author.
On the other hand, I don't want my books either a) pirated, or b) chained down.
Writing is work. Some day, I'd like to pay the rent doing work I love. If it's spammed all over the Net, I can kiss that dream good-bye.
I've discovered my favorite authors by someone handing me a battered paperback and saying "Read this." If I liked the author, I went out and bought their works. Heck, I have everything Philip K Dick and Tim Powers ever wrote, thanks to someone handing me a book.
In fact, one of my friends just said that I'm the only person he knows that "has three feet of Dick, and isn't afraid to show it off." All from a hand-to-hand paperback.
They can't kill PicoBSD; after all, it's maintained by volunteers.
Remember, they can't buy FreeBSD itself. They can employ several developers, they can provide the main FTP site, but they can't kill any part of FreeBSD any more than Red Hat could kill Linux.
Just as any one company cannot kill Linux, no one company can kill FreeBSD. BSDi does not own FreeBSD -- nobody owns FreeBSD. While it would suck big-time if they fired their FreeBSD developers, it wouldn't take more than a day for each of them to find a new job developing FreeBSD.
Wind River could kill BSD/OS. But by the time they do that, I suspect that the really cool stuff will have already been assimilated into FreeBSD. That process is well under way now.
If Wind River stopped selling FreeBSD CDs, how long do you think it would be until the FreeBSD Foundation picked up the slack? Or until Jordan Hubbard found a new employer who would do it for them?
I use FreeBSD on my Toshiba Satellite just fine. Sound, X, pcmcia, everything. If you're having trouble with PCMCIA, check out this Big Scary Daemons article: Laptops, PC Cards, and FreeBSD Short answer; if it doesn't work, you probably have an IRQ conflict.
This is a FTP-only release, to integrate the overseas and US versions of FreeBSD.
The release of RSA was deemed important enough to warrant this. It gives a convenient install point for those of us who want RSA on a production system and don't want to bother with upgrading after install.
After all, 4.1-RELEASE is rock-solid, there's no other reason to upgrade.
Well, on the subject of authors responding to comments on their own work:
There is a certain school of writing that considers discussing or defending one's own work in public to be crass. I write both fiction and technical material, and in the past I wrote role-playing games. (If Katz thinks this flaming is bad, he should see some RPG fans dissecting one's work! :)
Among these people, the rule in these situations is: read the comments, consider them, and use them to improve your own work. Never defend your work, because you'll eventually wind up at either: "You misread what I wrote," or "I disagree."
If they didn't understand you, you need to investigate your published writing and find your error. The point of writing is not to write so you can be understood; it is to write so you cannot be misunderstood. If they disagree, you can either choose rational discussion, or consider their arguments privately. Either way, flames don't enter into it.
Obviously, you can take this too far. Salman Rushdie needed to speak out when the Iranian theocracy declared a fatwah on him; but nobody has put a price on Katz's head, either.
The Net makes it easy to update documents. It might be that the old-school "publish it and let it stand on its own" standard is obsolete, and that living, constantly-updating articles will soon be considered the norm. This attitude will not die before then.
I'm not saying that Katz is of this school, but it's certainly possible. I know more than one professional writer who believes this. After attempting to publicly defend my own work, I believe it also.
Fortunately, unlike a paper mag, Slashdot has options to let you never see posts by a columnist. If he annoys you that much, set your preferences to hide him.